Offshoring journalism: A job list
Liz Foreman May 13th, 2007
Note: A draft of this post has been sitting on my desktop for a few months, but in light of even more journalism offshoring news, I thought I’d polish this up and hit the publish button.
This interesting article on Poynter has me thinking.
As more technology is available remotely and we’re trying to more things with fewer people, I’m going to predict that the offshoring of journalism jobs will suddenly explode - very soon.
It’s already happening in the print world. When are broadcasters going to follow suit?
Here’s my prediction list for broadcast jobs that will be offshored:
Centralcasting
More companies will start centralcasting their TV signals, with the staff for the centralcasting facility residing overseas. When everyone knocks down their sticks in 20 years because IPTV has taken over, this will further reduce the number of engineers at local TV stations and increase the number of IT staffers.
Community-generated content editing
As community-generated content becomes more prevalent, the moderating of incoming user-generated content is handled overseas. This includes a ton of stuff the public sends — video, photos, stories, etc. In order to offer a good user experience, you can’t auto post everything that comes in the door. This also includes getting rid of those pesky in-story spam/flame comments.
Video editing
Non-editorial (or low-level editorial) video editing tasks could be simplified and moved overseas. Logistically, things are on server, so no barriers there. Producers add editing instructions to the script file, which the overseas editor can see. The producer can also communicate with the editor via phone or IM.
Content repurposing
Media outlets are trying to figure out how to put the same content on multiple platforms - TV, web, cell, iPods, PSP, PDA, belt buckles (ha ha ha), etc. Until technology has caught up, humans still need to edit down stories, especially text, for additional formats.
Asset management
Effectively warehousing data is the future of the media (information!) industry. Playing librarian then selling the content is the new name of the game. Why not move data warehousing organization overseas? Perhaps the storage lives in the US and other co-location facilities, but the management is done remotely.
User feedback
Right now, many local media outlets, especially TV stations, see interaction with the public, like feedback messages, as secondary. Local TV stations usually let viewer calls flow into an already-busy newsroom, and emails are treated in the same way - do it if you have time. Soon enough, thanks companies that specialize in customer care, media companies will pay to tally and categorize feedback. Companies will realize that in a post-Nielsen ratings world, it’s extremely important to know what the public thinks.
Graphic design
Already centralized for some US companies, this would be offshored for daily, routine productions like local TV newscasts.
Ad production and scheduling
For those advertisers who aren’t big on creating their own ads, they will fill out a form with their ad rep and the form will be sent overseas where the order will be fulfilled. (This seems like it would already have been offshored by now…Perhaps I just don’t know of an example.)
The ad scheduling (traffic) end of the equation is a natural progression. I’d figure this would be handled by a firm that would also have sophisticated analysis tools to schedule ads on multiple platforms.
Copy editing and fact checking
A handful of newspapers are already doing this. One of my pet peeves when it comes to local broadcast journalists posting news on the web is many don’t have copy editing - period. I predict newsrooms will begin employing copy editors, though those copy editors will live overseas.
What are your thoughts? Have additional items for the “what if” list? Please add them in the comments section.
23 Comments Add your own
1. Mitch | May 13th, 2007 at 7:50 am
I’ll weigh in on this, as you’ve listed one of the things I do. I do graphic design for one of the networks. We’ve already been through this to some extent and found that the creative roles don’t outsource very well. Why? Because the people who live in the third world who have that kind of talent want to live here and if they live here, they want to live in a major city.
I can see someone in India listening to an audio feed of the Pasadena city council in India to write it up or a technician administrating DAM, but the creative work will always drive people to come here.
2. ! | May 13th, 2007 at 8:34 am
mitch, they said the same thing about car design 20 years ago. better bone up on your hindu.
the problem today is that those folks in india now want two square meals a day instead of just 1 for all the great work they’ve done.
so india won’t be the last stop.
3. ! | May 13th, 2007 at 8:36 am
btw- excellent post liz.
why not do MORE of them?
excellent.
4. Adrian Monck | May 13th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Come on Liz - producers/reporters should BE editing!
5. Mike Abundo | May 13th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Ad production’s already heavily offshored. I know because I oversaw some of it.
6. fleetwood mack | May 13th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Two things.
The first is Liz is dead right and it is going to be sooner rather than later. All those functions are being performed in Mumbai’s Bollywood now so they are ready.
And if you want to do well over there, best to bone up on your Hindi. That’s what Hindus speak.
7. Kashif | May 13th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
The Shape of Things to come. Nice!
8. Mitch | May 13th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Car design is a pretty bad example. Most of the Japanese car manufacturers have design studios here in the U.S., principally in Socal, which also happens to be the epicenter of broadcast design. Don’t take my post the wrong way. It’s perfectly possible to outsource graphic design, but my experience with those attempts have always ended poorly.
9. Mitch | May 13th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Let me also add that what I see happening is not outsourcing overseas, but outsourcing to people’s homes. There’s simply no reason for people to congregate to create and edit material when all of that can be done from home. We now routinely use the internet to produce and deliver HD material back and forth between New York and Los Angeles and yet we all gather here in LA to work on exactly the same type of Macs we have at home. The biggest barrier we experience is resistance from our IT people who resist opening our network to the internet!
10. Jordan | May 13th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Can we outsource Nancy Grace to India?
11. Safran | May 13th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Horrible hairpieces. We could outsource those, easy.
12. Z | May 13th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Sure, like anyone would take that job.
13. Charles | May 13th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Ssshh!! Ssshh! Don’t even mention outsourcing. Don’t freak the college student out. I like to pretend that, in an eternity, when I get a B.A. in Journalism and a B.A. in Communications that I’ll be able to do something in the States and not, say, India…
14. Pat | May 13th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I have worked for a company that has operations in Mumbai, the Phillipines, and some other outsourced locales.
It’s costing Americans a decent wage, but it does provide them for a measly one. I mostly worked with people who had been downsized and had to resort to making just under $10 an hour (these were people with degrees and a couple of decades of professional experience) and also worked with some who barely held a high school equivalency diploma, but they thought it was great because there was no place they could make “close to $10 an hour” for having to do nothing more than providing lame tech support. They just read off their manuals.
Outsourcing is MORE OF A DETRIMENT THAN TERRORISM in my opinion to millions more in this country. That statement might come across as outlandish to a lot of people, but seriously, outsourcing gets a very few rich and loads of people, Americans, get stiffed.
I refuse to ever purchase a Dell computer again because I used to have to speak with a foreigner when it went down. They always lied and said, “I am in Round Rock, TX.” BS. Lots and lots of companies use outsourced support staff.
15. Pat | May 13th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Outsourcing of talent has already taken place. Think Sinclair. That operation died, didn’t it? Beaming the weather talent in from afar, having a generic sports report, sprinkling in a few local sports stats, and then having an outsourced news anchor read his company produced propaganda with the local news blonde woman reading a few stories and closing the show with an animal themed kicker.
What we may see is just an AP-like consolidation of all the television operations……..at least on the gathering side. Newspapers will be done by 20 years time, too.
16. Mike Wendling | May 14th, 2007 at 4:07 am
One thing about journalism will never be outsourced - going out and getting the story. To do that, you have to be here (wherever ‘here’ is, San Antonio or London or Delhi).
Technical and low-skilled tasks could potentially be farmed out, and let’s hope that would free up more resources for people to go out and get stories. ‘Hope’ being the operative word.
17. Roman Sky | May 14th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
“When everyone knocks down their sticks in 20 years..” ??? IPTV or no IPTV, those sticks are big fat pipes delivering bits and bytes now and for a very long time… As bandwidth becomes more scarce, those broadcast data pipes and the associated spectrum allocations become all the more valuable as primary/secondary delivery technologies–if nothing else to offload what will become growing strains on wired, fibered and 3G/4G networks. Over the air data delivery is not going away, not being outsourced…nor will US government spectrum be managed from overseas. The sky is not falling. Rome is not burning.
18. Gary Wilson | May 14th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Here’s what will happen on a local basis.
Different organizations will email press releases and news items to an “account” offshore.
A 50cent an hour worker will repackage that information to a local website for publication.
Joe or Jane sixpack won’t know the difference and what will be lost will be the groundbreaking investigative journalism and the news will be whatever local officials and cops say that it is.
19. ! | May 14th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
17.
admittedly i don’t know the correct answer, but isn’t “that stick” only downstream capable?
20. DougW | May 14th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
The same short sited corporate weasels who deny global warming exists will also deny the possibility of their own demise… why?
Everybody makes $10.00 per hours….
Hardly anybody can buy anything (even at Wal-Mart)
Businesses go broke, or stop buying advertising…
TV Stations news operations, networks go under
Outsourcing ends
21. Roman Sky | May 15th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Tons of downstream, high speed, data is 3/4 of the battle.
Down/up paths will work together seamlessly–agnostic of delivery method. Imagine if you could travel to Mars in 30 minutes, but it took you an hour to get back (like current down/up speeds)… Now, imagine you could travel to Mars in 5 minutes, but it still took you an hour to get back (that’s the spectrum + “wire, fiber, 3G/4G play”)… This is not theory–this is technology and biz modeling currently moving from the labs to the real world. Don’t lose that remote, just yet.
22. D C | June 10th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Nice?
Okay, let American journalists work in Mumbai then. Do they have a H1B program?
Worse, with America’s infrastructure sold out to the lowest bidder much the same way any desperate tart would, what’s going to happen to America?
And until the cost of living in America matches India’s, the wages being offered won’t allow Americans to live. Funny nobody’s mentioned that during this “globalization” fad…
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